For the few of you who have not heard of this perky Italian-American cooking dynamo, let me give you the short stroke picture. Her claim to fame is producing a complete gourmet tasting meal in less than 30min. The show is fast paced and entertaining in a down home cooking style where a “half a handful” is a precise recipe term.

Now, the week before Thanksgiving, she had a show that purported to produce the whole Thanksgiving feast in less than 60 minutes. Claudette decided that this year, we were going to try it for the big event.

Monday (T-day minus 3), she returned from the stores with all almost all ingredients required as listed on the recipe sheets printed from the shows web site. The only thing missing was….unsalted shelled pistachios and TURKEY.

“I should have picked them up last week when I saw them all over the place” she lamented.

It was hard for me to believe that TURKEY wasn’t available at any of three local markets she tried. She then explained to clueless husband, that WHOLE turkeys are available everywhere and are dirt cheap. The Rachel Ray recipe calls for “boneless turkey breast halves with skin attached”. The Cosentino's Market had them but the price was $46! Yikes!

So confident that I could find the elusive turkey boobs much cheaper, I volunteered to complete the shopping list for her on Tuesday while she went to work. Easy-Peasy as Rachel might say.

Tuesday morning, Costco was my first stop. Pistachios and turkey breasts. No problem. Peanuts, cashews, almonds, walnuts…no shelled pistachios. Whole turkeys, turkey legs, chicken breasts with skin attached…no turkey breasts. The butcher behind the counter said they had them last week, but some Rachael person on TV seems to have caused a run on them this week.

I was starting to get a bad feeling about my ability to locate the main ingredient for Thursday’s dinner and called Claudette to see if she had an acceptable alternative if the required turkey breasts couldn’t be located. Claudette said she since she had already spent considerable time and effort acquiring all the special ingredients for this special Rachael Ray Thanksgiving dinner that I should really try to find said turkey breasts.

As an alternative, I also mildly conjectured on just how hard it might be to buy a whole turkey and perform a bird double mastectomy myself.

I was then informed on how uninformed I was about butchering meat so off to Lunardi’s, another gourmet market, in search of the main dinner attraction.Amazingly, they had them! Whole boneless turkey breasts with skin attached. Fifteen dollars…EACH!

At this point, I didn’t care about how much they were. I have been on the hunt for over four hours now, driving more than 20 miles (at $2.50/gallon) and was getting tired. So with $30 worth of boned turkey breast, I continued the hunt for the last item on the shopping list.

This store has an entire isle devoted to nuts. I don’t mean moi, but the edible kind and sure enough they had pistachios! Salted pistachios in shell, unsalted pistachios in shell, shelled and salted pistachio meats but…NO UNSALTED shelled pistachios! The last stop at Trader Joe's 10 miles across town in search for pistachio meats produced success.

Fifty miles and six hours later, I have finally acquired the only TWO remaining items necessary for our “quick and easy” Thanksgiving feast.

I greet Claudette at the door with the happy news only to find her standing there with a bag of turkey breasts she picked up at the local PW on the way home.